Yesterday I headed to the final day of the Taste of Sydney Festival. After days of seeing dishes posted onto Instagram by fellow Sydney food bloggers, I was excited.

What started as a miserable day with dark, low lying clouds moving quickly through the sky turned out to be a sunny, blue skied day.

After purchasing what I hoped would be enough crowns, the official currency of the festival, we started with a cup of the new Rekorderlig apple cider appropriately called Festival.

Working in an anti clockwise direction, our first stop was 4Fourteen. Impressed by the suckling pig on the spit we ordered the slow roast pig with pickled cabbage and apple butter. Combining all elements with a little piece of the crackling style crisp worked well, the pork was soft and the cabbage fresh and crisp. Mr FPL wasn't impressed when the wind tried to take one of the crisps away. Moving to the next group of stalls I ordered Biota's dipped lamb caramel bun with soft lamb belly and hot lamb glaze and Otto's Orecchiette 'bolognese' consisting of wagyu beef, pork and veal Sangiovese ragu. The caramel bun which looks very neat in the above photo, ended up a little messy from the juices of the lamb glaze, disecting the bun we tried to guess was there apple or onion on the bun? The Orecchiette didn't disappoint, we discovered Gabby has recently learnt the meaning of the word 'more' as she kept repeating this word after each piece of ear shaped pasta.

Not being able to forget our first experience of Porteno's at the Sydney Festival earlier this year we stopped at the busy stall. Attracted to the sight of the crispy looking Porchetta sitting above charcoal coals we added the Icon dish, BBQ'd porchetta to our order of baked ricotta. These two dishes were great. The sweet and salty flavours and textures of the baked ricotta dish were amazing, whilst the crunchiness and right amount of soft, chewy fat from the crackling was perfect. Topped with a little silverbeet, a hint of flavour from the truffle and some pecorino accelerated the experience.

After a short break in the Trolley'd seating area which contained some Ansett memorabilia we ordered a plate of steamed prawn dumplings with spicy ponzu from Sake. The dumplings coated in noodles with just a hint of spice was a nice change. Also in this area was The Cut Bar & Grill which we later returned to and ordered our last savoury dish of the day being the Icon dish - French Dip grain fed beef standing rib roast slider. Looking fairly unattractive this slider invoked a number of senses, when I first looked at it I scrunched my nose in distaste, as I bit into it I thought the bun was too sweet, however when I got to the beef which was soft and a little fatty my mind changed, it was like the bun and beef transformed, hard to explain it ended up being very delicious.

Heading towards the end of the food stalls we ordered Movida's, Pinciots Morunos, a skewer of Flinders Island lamb marinated in spices and cooked over charcoal.

In desperate need for a drink we stopped at the Cascade stand for a cocktail. I ordered The Paddington which consisted of Lemon, Lime and Bitters, mint and few other ingrediants which I can not remember. It was very refreshing.

With little 'Crowns' left we used the last of our crowns on Pei Modern spiced doughnuts with a sweet whey butterscotch sauce, a cup of apple, mango and passionfruit Verano cider and a jar of Maille's mustard with wine and blue cheese which came with a free jar of Cornichons extra fine gherkins.So after a day of eating which dish was the best? Porteno's, BBQ'd Porchetta, closely followed by the not so good looking Cut Bar and Grill, French Dip grain fed beef standing rib roast slider!